America's Middle Class is Doomed ... J. D. Longstreet

America's Middle Class is Doomed
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Obama has billed himself as the champion of America's Middle Class.  It's bull.  His policies are destroying the Middle Class.

The recent unemployment figure is 7.2%.  Well, that's the figure the government reported for public consumption.  Of course, the REAL unemployment figure is closer to 12% than 7.2%.

One of the most important contributing factors to the decrease in the unemployment figure is the fact that so many Americans have simply stopped looking for work.  See, THEY are not included in the unemployment figure let by the US government.  If they were counted we'd be looking at an unemployment figure much closer to that 12% I mentioned above.

Consider this from a report from back in August:  "Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work,” said Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center quoted by McClatchy Washington Bureau. Hall was head of the US Bureau of Labor (BLS) Statistics from 2008 to 2012.
 
Citing the BLS Household Survey, Hall said that over the past six months 963,000 more people reported that they were employed while 936,000 of them reported they were in part-time jobs. Hall continued, “That is a really high number for a six-month period. I am not sure that has ever happened over six months before.” (“Report: 97 percent of new US jobs are part-time”, World Socialist Web Site)  SOURCE:  http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/19/obamas-destroys-the-middle-class/

There can be no question the 40 hour work week in America is endangered -- if not doomed -- by the advent of Obamacare -- another outstanding example of the unintended consequences of a government critically out of touch with its citizens.

So how is business fairing?  Not good.  Consider this:  "While pre-tax corporate profits are at record highs, amounting to 12 percent of GDP, net investment is barely 4 percent of output. This is despite the fact that the cost of equity capital is low, as are interest rates. Increased profits are not being used to expand production, as took place in the past, but are increasingly being used to finance stock buy backs, so as to increase the rate of return on shareholders’ capital.

Under what were once “normal” conditions, increased profits would lead to greater investment, higher production and an increase in wages, leading to an expanding market. Today, however, wages are falling as a share of GDP.

This result indicates that rising profits are no longer being produced by an expansion of the market, as they were in the past, but are increasingly the result of cost-cutting, as firms raise their bottom line by grabbing an increased share of a stagnant or contracting market from their rivals. In other words, the once “normal” process of capitalist accumulation—increasing investment leading to an expanding market, higher profits and further investment—has completely broken down." SOURCE:  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/06/pers-a06.html

Americans have forgotten Obama's promise to fundamentally change America.  Believe me -- he is keeping that promise by crippling and finally destroying America's middle class.

No President has been as divisive as Obama.  The country is split asunder in near equal parts.  Americans are fearful and and at each other's throats.

Consider all the new laws and rules and regulations decreed by Obama and geared toward the middle class.  It's all a part of the master plan to destroy the middle class.
 
As long as Americans are fighting to survive, or battling through all the regulatory rules, just to keep a small business afloat, trying to find a job that will at least allow them to pay the rent and keep the lights on, they don;t have the time nor the inclination to fight the on coming authoritarian government Obama is creating right before our eyes.
If one considers the strong stock market and the fantastic increase in the number of poor on the government dole, one would have to agree that the rich AND the poor have done well under Obama.  It is the middle class, the people who make America work, who have been creamed by the fundamental change Obama has brought to America.

With immigration reform about to raise its ugly head in Congress, the specter of an even greater influx of immigrants into America is a given.  The US has been the victim of the greatest land invasion in the history of this continent.  America has been invaded and is well on the way to occupation by a people seeking to re-populate a land area their government legally sold to America well over 150 years ago.

When one compares the fall of the Roman Empire with the fall of the USA one cannot escape the parallels between Rome succumbing to the migration of barbarians into the empire and the capital city of Rome itself to the invasion by immigrants of the USA.   The end result may yet prove to be the same.

Taxes paid by the middle class go towards free eduction, healthcare, and so much more.  It has  placed a tremendous strain on the middle class, as well. 

As a result of all the above, common sense tells us the middle class cannot survive in America.  But that is a hallmark of socialism. No middle class.  Under socialism a nation has a lower class and -- the elite.

Care to guess the class in which you will eventually wind up?

© J. D. Longstreet
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The Cruzifiction of Ted ... J. D. Longstreet

The Cruzifiction of Ted

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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I don't know Senator Ted Cruz.  Never met the man.  But I have friends and family in the great state of Texas and THEY are thrilled with Cruz's, shall we say ... "zeal."

 Last weekend Senator Cruz was met with an eight minute standing ovation at a gathering in Texas.  Eight minutes!   That's a lot of applauding!  A lot, indeed!

 Here in the South, we STILL cherish our "firebrand" politicians.  We love it when they take the fight to the opposition.  We also love it when they take a position right up front and plant their flag and declare their immovability.

In the few months Cruz has been in Washington he has become a "thorn in the flesh" to moderates and liberals and socialists and Marxists, and progressives, well, everyone --with the exception of conservatives.

 Shortly after Cruz was elected, I asked friends in Texas if Cruz was for real.  It was still early days and they would commit only to say he APPEARED to be the real thing.  I then opined that if he was, indeed the "Real Thing" he would be crucified by the left and the Mainstream Media, which is, of course, one and the same.

 

 It didn't take long. 

 

Boat rockers are not welcome, it seems, in Congress -- by either side.  Cruz has managed to keep the boat rocking since he had the temerity to stride away from the back benches and insist that Congress and the President follow the dictates of the Constitution.  THAT was unheard of behavior, especially from some pipsqueak southerner with a decided Texas accent.  How dare he insist the Constitution be followed! 

 And that was from his own political party!

 

 Oh, he was also assigned a new nickname courtesy of that old reliable RINO from Arizona, John McCain -- "Wacko Bird." 

 Cruz instantly became the face of the Tea Party in Washington.  Both democrats and Republicans HATE the Tea Party.  Even though the Tea Party is largely responsible for the GOP gaining control of the House of Representatives, The republicans, that is to say, the "establishment republicans" (The blue bloods and the country club set, the moderates, liberals, and progressives within the GOP) took umbrage at the gall of the "Kmart republicans" when they refused to "go along to get along."

 Look.  The GOP had better get used to the fact that the party's base loves Ted Cruz.  Every time some pompous stuffed shirt repub takes another cheap shot at Cruz, the base takes it personally.

 

The conservatives in the GOP, that is to say -- the base of the party, is on the verge of a mass migration AWAY from the Republican Party to become either Independent voters, or, to form another political party, a conservative political party.  In either event, the GOP will be relegated to minority status as far into the future as the eye can see -- if it survives at all.

 

 Is Cruz positioning himself to run for President in 2016?  Possibly.  He’s doing and saying all the things pre-candidates do and say.  He’s visiting the early primary and caucus states and such.  But frankly, I’ll be surprised to see him actually make a try for it simply because I do not think Senator Cruz is eligible to be a candidate for President of the US.  He is NOT a natural born citizen of the United States.  Do not delude yourself into thinking the democrats and/or the Mainstream Media will let that pass.  They will crucify Senator Cruz around the clock.  See, there IS a double standard in national politics – one for the democrats and an entirely different standard for republicans.

Senator Cruz, notwithstanding, the Republican party is leaderless and will remain so as long as the party is split and at war with itself.  

 I have never believed the Republican Party needed a “Big Tent.”   The GOP is not the Democrat Party; at least it WASN’T until recently,  when , for whatever reason, it decided to become democrat-lite.

The Democrat Party is not really a party -- per se.  (with respect to its inherent nature) It is more a conglomeration of special interest groups than it is a political party.   That does not work for the GOP’s conservative base.

 Conservatives are seeking a national leader, a champion, if you will.  At the moment, more and more conservatives are turning to Senator Cruz.  Anything that plays havoc with Obama’s plan to destroy the Republican Party -- and crush conservatives -- is just fine with me. 

 © J. D. Longstreet

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Predicting America's Future ... Alan Caruba

Predicting America's Future

 By Alan Caruba

One of the great parlor games of pundits, politicians, journalists, and just about everyone else is predicting the future.

There’s a wonderful book, “The Experts Speak”, that is filled, page after page, with predictions and pronouncements by people of presumed wisdom and knowledge, all of which turned out to be often hilariously wrong. In 1913, regarding Einstein’s theory of relativity, Ernst Mach, a professor of physics at the University of Vienna, said, “I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas.”

I prefer optimists to pessimists and the co-authors of “America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21^st Century—why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come”, James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus, are optimists.

In his foreword to the book, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, better known as the “Instapundit”, cites the late economist, Herbert Stein, who said “Something that can’t go on forever, won’t”, noting that “The American 2.0 approach, which delivered stability and prosperity to many for decades, is now more problem than solution, as banks fail, bureaucrats flounder, and the economy fails to deliver the jobs—or the tax revenues—needed to keep the whole enterprise going.” Reynolds, however, agrees that “The Jeffersonian individualism that was embodied in in America 1.0 never really went away.” And that’s the good news.

Bennett and Lotus begin by saying, “We are optimistic about the long-term prospects for American freedom and prosperity. You should be, too.” They do not believe the nation is “on an inevitable road to tyranny and poverty. Predictions of the end of America are deeply mistaken,” but they do say that “The current politico-economic regime is falling apart.”

I think most people will agree with that as a deeply divided America struggles to deal with slow economic growth, a Marxist President, and the final gasp of a government that has expanded to a point of demonstrating the wisdom of the Constitution’s limits on its size and role. The Tea Party movement and the founding principles of the Republican Party are all about those limitations.

As Obamacare fails dramatically, Americans across the political spectrum will want to return to a more manageable, less intrusive government. They did that when they elected Ronald Reagan.  America needs a leader to emerge who will bring the two factions together and, if history is a guide, they will find one. It will not be easy because two generations have passed through the liberal indoctrination of its schools and because the nation’s media, composed of those graduates, is dominated by liberals.

Another factor is demography, the study of populations. Americans are living longer and the effects of that are undermining the future of progressive programs such as Social Security and Medicare. At some point they will have to be reformed, along with the rising costs of medical care.

Americans, since the early years of the last century have gone back and forth between progressive programs and a yearning for less control from centralized government. The income tax, the government’s “safety net” introduced following the Great Depression, the growth and decline of unions, and even Prohibition demonstrate this ambivalence. Obamacare is likely to be repealed just as Prohibition was.

America 1.0 stretched from the century the preceded the Revolution and extended to the Civil War. It was a largely agrarian society of farmers with the emphasis on individual responsibility. It was, as well, a society based on the nuclear family, a structure that remains today, though is under attack by liberals. America 2.0 saw the rise of industrialization and, following World War Two, the nation as a superpower in the world.

America 2.0 is crumbling, say the authors, and that “we are in the midst of slow but wrenching transition to an emerging America 3.0.” It will be “an even bigger transition, from industrial to an individualized-and-networked economy that we are undergoing now.”

One of the elements of the transition that the authors recommend is the abolishment of the federal income tax and replacing it with a national consumption tax, saying that “The required disclosure of personal economic information required in filing tax forms constitutes perhaps the largest single invasion of civil liberties in America, violating the spirit of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against search and seizure of personal information without a judicial warrant.”

Here again, putting the Internal Revenue in change of enforcing Obamacare will likely trigger a backlash against it, the income tax system, and generate a return to the individual rights enumerated in the Constitution.

Then, too, the world is also changing as Islamism seeks to drag its population back to a dark age of feudalism and slavery. The wave of terrorism is generating a backlash, even in nations where Islam is the dominant faith. America, in the process, has learned it cannot export its unique democratic system and engage in “nation building.” The original faith in the United Nations to deter wars has faded and the growth of various regional organizations will likely replace it.

The co-authors of “America 3.0” say “We can sketch only the bare outlines of what an America 3.0 defense and foreign policy might be like in reality. But those policies must be consistent with what can actually be achieved by American power, with a renewed focus on securing the global commons for trade, maintaining our alliances, and defending the American free and prosperous way of life.”

We are living in times of both rapid and slow change, and America has the mechanism—the Constitution—to make the changes needed to adjust and the strength to protect itself from enemies, domestic and foreign, in a global economy. It won’t be easy and it will not be fast enough for most, but America will remain a dominant agent for change.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog recently passed more than 3 million page views. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place to go! You can find Alan Caruba on both Facebook and Twitter as well.

Democrats Want 2016 Presidential Election By Fraud ... Kevin Roeten

Democrats Want 2016 Presidential Election By Fraud
By Kevin Roeten
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Illegal immigrants are likely the way Democrats want to secure a 2016 presidential vote. With the media giving 24/7 coverage to the federal shutdown and debt-ceiling standoff, other important news slipped under the radar.

Over the past few months activists have been arrested demonstrating outside the Capitol, demanding action on legalizing illegal immigrants. The administration deports about 400,000 illegals/yr. In Phoenix, illegals clamed all deportations should unilaterally halt, until all illegals are ‘legalized’. That includes the 12 million already in the U.S. .
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) said only 10.8 percent of the ‘detainers’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued in the first six months of this year were for those having serious threats to public safety. Then, TRAC  claimed 38 percent of those whom ICE put in deportation proceedings had a criminal record, including traffic violations.

Fraud-Free Elections
A certain way to achieve near-perfect election results with all the illegals now in the country, is to ensure only American citizens vote in an American election. The best way to accomplish fraud-free elections is to have voters supply voter IDs when voting. But Democrats are vigorously waging a holy-war on voter-ID laws. Attorney General Eric Holder, wanting elimination of voter-ID, contends such laws are designed solely to “suppress” minority votes.

The Left has begun to claim voter-ID law massively discriminates. It seems the ‘Left’ refuses to believe Martin Luther King Jr. always emphasized fairness, so he likely would have supported voter-ID laws, since everyone is treated equally, and these laws protect everyone’s vote.

Federal Election Reform
President Carter and James Baker co-chaired Federal Election Reform (2005) [Building Confidence in U.S. Elections] which strongly recommended voter-ID laws to ensure election integrity. But many Democrats who had supported voter-ID laws, suddenly lost interest.

Recently the commission (headed by James Baker) stated: “We are recommending a photo-ID system for voters designed to increase the registration with a more affirmative and aggressive role for states in finding new voters and providing free IDs for those without driver’s licenses.”  The commission also urged states to clean up their registrations, which is required under the National Voter Registration Act, better known as “Motor Voter.”

In June 2012, Obama’s Justice Department, spearheaded by Thomas Perez (Civil Rights Division) sued Florida for purging its noncitizens. Secretary of State (Fl) Ken Detzner sued the Department of Homeland Security requiring citizenship verification of registered voters. The Department relented. A year later, Florida Gov. Scott (R) announced voter rolls would be cleaned up—which greatly upset liberals.

From the Carter/Baker Report: “Voter identification can enhance ballot integrity without raising barriers to voting. Voters in nearly 100 democracies use a photo-identification card without fear of or infringement on their rights. The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters. Photo IDs currently are needed to board a plane, enter federal buildings, and cash a check. Voting is equally important.”

It’s not hateful, or racist, to require an ID for voting, as is done for dozens of varying everyday transactions.

On Sept. 30, the Justice Department sued North Carolina over its new voter-ID law, and is threatening to sue other states. An unbiased onlooker would get the impression the Obama administration is totally hostile to clean elections.

A major reason Democrats changed their mind recently about voter-ID, was because they understood the boon from illegal fraudulent voting was a sure way to elect a Democrat—especially for the presidency.

Voter ID Desperately Needed
Mike Baker’s two columns discussing the same point: [Why voter ID is needed: dogs and dead people recruited to vote ... ], and [Study: 1 in 8 US voter registrations have errors | Politics | KATU.com ... . This latest report (James Simpson) reveals the Left’s vote-fraud strategy during 2012 elections [The Left's National Vote Fraud Strategy Exposed - Accuracy in Media …].

It looks as if elimination of the ‘Consent Decree’ [GOP legally barred from fighting vote fraud – WorldNetDaily] may be our last, best hope, to obtain a fraud-free election.

© Copyright by Kevin Roeten, 2013. All rights reserved.
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A former Chemical Engineer, Kevin Roeten enjoys riding the third rail of journalism: politics and religion. As an orthodox Catholic, Roeten appreciates the juxtaposition of the two supposedly incompatible subjects.   Kevin is a Guest Columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times, and the Independent (Ohio), and writes for numerous blogs (Nolan Chart, Allvoices) and newspapers, including USA Today.   A collaborator in the book Americans on Politics, Policy, and Pop Culture (Jason Wright and Aaron Lee), he is also an amateur astronomer, and delves into scientific topics.   Kevin Roeten can be reached at roetenks@charter.net.

Obama to push Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill ... J. D. Longstreet

Amnesty For Illegal Aliens

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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You should be aware that if you are an American and you are an opponent of amnesty for illegal aliens now living in the United States  you are a demagogue.

Don’t believe me? Well take a look at Obama’s answer to a reporter’s question concerning so-called “immigration reform” which, translated, means: “Amnesty” for illegal aliens hiding (in plain sight) in the US today. Here’s what the Prez said:

“Now, am I going to be able to snap my fingers and get this done? No,” said Obama. “This is going to be difficult; it's going to require bipartisan cooperation. There are going to be demagogues out there who try to suggest that any form of pathway for legalization for those who are already in the United States is unacceptable. And those are fights that I'd have to have if my poll numbers are at 70 or if my poll numbers are at 40. That's just the nature of the U.S. immigration debate. But ultimately, I think the American people want fairness, Obama continued. “And we can create a system in which you have strong border security, we have an orderly process for people to come in, but we're also giving an opportunity for those who are already in the United States to be able to achieve a pathway to citizenship so that they don't have to live in the shadows, and their children and their grandchildren can have a full participation in the United States. So I'm confident we can get it done.” That, dear reader, is the current President of the US speaking back in 2009.


Have you stopped to consider how many millions more will pile onto the dole US taxpayers will have to support if this amnesty bill passes? 12 million is a drop in the bucket to the REAL figure, which you are NOT going to hear bandied about by this administration, nor the democrat/socialists in the Congress.

Obama and the democrat/socialists must REALLY think the average American is an idiot! Why, they are so disconnected from the reality in America today that they have no idea the odor they get a whiff of every now and again is the tar and feathers being prepared in their honor! Well, a few of the congressmen and senators attending some of the town hall meetings have felt the heat. But not enough - not nearly enough, to put the fear of God into them!

I have asked before: How is it that Washington cannot feel the anger of the average US citizen toward any relaxing of the immigration laws, especially toward the Hispanics who are flooding our country and bringing our health services, and educational services, and welfare services, to the breaking point? How can Congress and the President not know this? How?

Common sense dictates that they MUST know this. So, why are they continuing to refuse to secure our southern border and return those illegal Hispanics, already inside the US, to Mexico… or their country of origin? Instead, they now want to make those who are already here illegally… legal?  Are they nuts???
 
No, they are not nuts. They just don’t give a damn what you and I think, or want or NOT want, as the case may be. We don’t count. Our votes used to count - but no longer. You see, the democrat/socialists have managed to secure the votes of the less literate among us to override our dissenting votes, anyway. So, I have to conclude our vote truly doesn’t count.

Look, they send armies of “helpers” into the field to register “new” voters from among those whose livelihood depends on the government check they receive the first of each month. And it works! Now, add to those legions the millions of illegal aliens who will be voting for the democrat/socialists after the Obama Regime pronounces them “legal,” and you and I will be overruled at the ballot box in perpetuity.

In the meantime, the GOP continues it's suicide attempt by working quietly behind the scenes to see that the President's Immigration Reform Bill is passed in the US House of Representatives.  

The GOP, somehow, has allowed itself to be sold a bill of goods.. They have come to believe that voting for AMNESTY for illegal aliens will ingratiate them with the Hispanics and draw swarms of hispanic voters to the Republican Party.  

One is compelled to ask: Are there no sentient human beings left in the hierarchy of the Republican Party?  Is there no one in the higher echelons of the GOP with conscious perception left?   Do they not understand that passing the Obama Immigration Reform Bill will consign the GOP to minority party status in the US Congress in perpetuity? 

If the Immigration Reform Bill, the "Amnesty Bill," is passed we will truly lose America… forever.

© J. D. Longstreet 

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Just Say NO ... To Obamacare!

Just Say NO ... To Obamacare!

Delay Obamacare? 
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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The lies about how America LOVES Obamacare continue to pour from the White House as water over Niagara Falls.  But that is ALL they are ... LIES!

For many Americans, the idea of Obamacare was spawned in Hell, itself, with Satan's seal of approval stamped in red hot letters across the bottom.

Obamacare is nothing more than Obama's redistributing the nation's wealth. It's Marxism, pure and simple. And the people HATE it!

"Social security numbers allegedly passed around in clear sight. Page after page of unworkable code. And no clarity on when it will all be fixed.

Just another day of trying to log in to healthcare.gov.

Two weeks after its launch, the federal health insurance exchange is a "failure," says The Washington Post's Ezra Klein. Some officials deserve to be fired, according to Robert Gibbs, who until February 2011 was one of President Obama's closest advisers.

And those are the Affordable Care Act's supporters."  SOURCE:  http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2013/october/17/california-healthline-obamacare-delay-questioned.aspx

Expect some time to elapse, however, before a story is eventually released in the Mainstream Media that the White House is "thinking" about delaying Obamacare for a while, probably a year.

Then there is this from an article by Avik Roy at Forbes.com entitled:  "Obamacare's Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn't Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are."  In the article Mr. Roy says:

"A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away."  SOURCE:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-health-plans-true-costs/

It is entirely possible, gentle reader,  the democrats have themselves a white elephant in Obamacare and it is already beginning to take its toll.  

Americans are NOT signing up -- IN DROVES.  Only a tiny fraction of those who actually managed to access the website signed up, something like one percent, nation wide, after three weeks in operation.

Seems to me, the smart move is to NOT SIGN UP and pay the fine instead.  Compared to the godawful premiums, the fine is nothing.

Ever since the original tea party in Boston in which Sam Adams and the boys donned Indian (Whoops!  "Native American") disguises and dumped much of a ship's cargo of tea into Boston Harbor, Americans have known the value of "civil disobedience" when the government over them insists on taking their hard earned money for the government's oft frivolous purposes -- or -- simply to redistribute the wealth. 

Obamacare is the largest scheme to redistribute America's wealth our overreaching government has devised to date. 

I laugh every time I hear a democrat say the American people reelected Obama because of Obamacare.  That's a hoot! 

Take a look at who, exactly, voted for Obama and you will find that a huge portion of them were Americans who pay no taxes -- at all --  and are, for all intents and purposes, "wards of the government" relying upon the government dole for their very existence.  In many cases it has become a family tradition with generations of the same family suckling from the government teat.  Sure.  THEY'RE going to support ANYONE who guarantees them an income drained from the national treasury.  A Pope once said:  "Anytime you rob Peter to pay Paul -- you can rely upon the support of Paul!"  A truism if there has ever been one.


Maybe it's time to recycle Nancy Reagan's anti-drug message from back in the eighties:  Just say NO!"  This time apply the slogan to Obamacare:  "Just Say No To Obamacare!"  If Obamacare cannot stand on its own, it will collapse of its own weight -- and that would be a glorious day for Americans.

As each day goes by, we learn of more and more problems with Obamacare from the software down to lack of training for so called "navigators."  

The political left is ready to begin, in fact, they have already begun their campaign to replace Obamacare with a completely government run single payer healthcare system just like other socialist and communist countries have.  Articles, editorials, and letters to the editor  are popping up all over the country touting replacement of Obamacare with a single payer system.  Not even a month out of the chute and the dems want to make it worse!

Many Americans have finally come round to wondering how the government will manage their healthcare if that same government can't even manage a website on the Internet?

© J. D. Longstreet
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Emasculation as Policy ... Eric Peters

Emasculation as Policy

by Eric Peters

It’s not so much that they want your guns. It’s your manhood they’re really after. I mean this in a generic way, mind. It applies equally to men and women. They want to take away your self-respect – which naturally follows once they’ve defrocked you of your ability to take care of yourself.

This should be obvious by now – to anyone who has watched the pathetic spectacle of disarmed (and thus, helpless) men and women being cattle-chuted out of a building with their hands over their heads in the “I surrender” pose following a mass shooting – almost invariably perpetrated in a “gun free” zone.

Or by the way Obamacare will decide for you whether you need to buy health insurance – what kind of health insurance – and how much you’ll pay for it. The way your doctor will become another government agent, making decisions for you, controlling you – and your family’s private affairs – at the behest of the government.

The way the government dictates the type of car you’re allowed to buy – or build (if you wanted to).

The way they tell you what you may – and may not – do with your own physical body.
They way they affront your personal space – including your family’s personal space – at every turn.

It is relentless, systematic, synergistic – and absolutely deliberate. Part of a comprehensive plan that’s been carefully constructed and nurtured and advanced over decades to emasculate the populace so as to render it not only amenable to being led and controlled, but begging to be led and controlled.

Example: Successfully attack the principle that a man (or a woman) has the right to defend himself by taking away the means of self-defense and you’ve made him helpless, which makes him fearful … which renders him dependent.

Including that person’s family – because they cannot depend on him. And so they look to government – their “leaders” – for succor. To be kept “safe.”  Please, help us!  Do something!

Never – what can I do? I’ll handle it.

This is exactly what those who seek to control and lead are after.

A man with a gun in his home stands a good chance of successfully defending his home – his kids, his wife – against a violent intruder. The mere fact that a homeowner might have a gun is by itself a very strong deterrent – ask any thug.

This is hugely empowering. And it is why the right to keep and bear arms is under such concerted and vicious attack. Strip a man of the ability to defend himself and his family and you emasculate him. You diminish him as a man in his own eyes and in the eyes of his family. You make him something less than a man. Because after all, what else can you call a person unable to defend himself, his wife and kids? Who must cringe in a locked bathroom with them while he desperately calls on other men to come and save him. Such a man is something less than a man.

Again, exactly what’s wanted.

And of course, the same is true for women – perhaps even more so, because the object here is also to cause her to despise her man. Men, in general – except those designated as enforcers for the state. These, she is taught to reverence as “heroes.”

But never her own husband or boyfriend.
A woman who carries a gun knows she stands a chance against a man intent upon assaulting her. That she can do more than scream. That she is safe in her home – or walking to her car. That she is not utterly at the mercy of others, at any rate – because she can fight back. This imparts self-respect, confidence – and most alarming of all (to those intent upon leading and controlling) it renders them irrelevant. They’re not needed – literally – and thus, psychologically.

What, above all else, defines an adult human being? Is it not the ability to take care of oneself? Physically as well as financially? To be in control. To decide for oneself. To not have to always defer to others.

If that is taken away, what have you got?

A biological adult with the mental state of a child. A creature aware that childhood is long gone but for whom the status of grownup never arrived. The nagging feeling of insecurity, of being out of control.

And under the control of others.

It engenders self-loathing and – above all – a loathing for those who still have their self-respect. Who have not knuckled under; who say, Piss off! Who resist. Who refuse to comply and Do As Ordered. Observe the sneering contempt – the spittle-spewing fury – directed at those who insist upon their right to possess guns, or who denounce “safety” checkpoints, Obamacare and all the rest of it. It is more than merely disagreement. It is the keening wail of a child infuriated at the sight of another child (as he sees them) being allowed to get away with it.

The same thread runs through virtually everything the government – that is, those who insist they have the right to dictate the terms and conditions of our lives – does to us.

“Gun control,” Obamacare, seat belt laws, the TSA folderol – all touted as being  about “protecting” us and necessary to “keep us safe” – exactly the sort of things a parent tells a child. In fact they are all about demeaning grown human beings by empowering other human beings to treat them like idiot children – most especially in full view of their own families. To scold and threaten them – as at “seatbelt checkpoints.” Is it conceivable, really, to break down the self-respect of a grown man more completely than by having an authority figure – often one his junior in age as well as intelligence – order him to “buckle up”? In front of his wife and kids? It is not even necessary to do so at a checkpoint. A child learns that his father – this supposed man he sprang from – must  obey his parents (the government, its enforcers) just as he must obey his. It’s an embarrassment, a shaming.

And that’s exactly the point. The object, rather.
 
Just like it’s the point of Obamacare, which will not only force you to buy something you may very reasonably and rationally think you’ve got no real need for but which will also become the means by which government – those with guns and funny costumes who believe they have the right to dictate how we live our lives – will interject themselves into the few remaining slivers of freedom-of-action we’ve still got left.

 Nothing will be your own to decide anymore. Not how you live your life, not how you raise your kids. Not what you eat, nor how you recreate. The very concept of yours will be abolished. Nothing will be left up to you.

Adult parenting will become all-encompassing.


Just as onerous taxes – especially the inescapable ones on homes and land and other forms of property -  are designed specifically to prevent anyone from ever achieving any semblance of true independence via self-sufficiency at least as much they are to generate revenue for the state. The whole object is to reduce the population to a state of perpetual, low-grade gnawing fear and dependence. To keep them working – and paying and never, above all else, given time for thinking.

Deny them their self-respect. Their adulthood.

Humble them, most particularly the men. Encourage women – and the kids – to look to specially chosen men (the state and its enforcers) for their “safety.”

The rest will naturally follow.

If we allow it.

The good news is a small but growing number of Americans have decided they won’t allow it. That they have had enough. That they will resist. Intellectually, by rejecting the idea that anyone has the right to dictate to anyone else how they will live their lives. Physically, if need be – If they refuse to leave us be and continue to force themselves upon us.

Count me among them.

How about you?

Eric Peters
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 Eric Peters is a longtime car/bikes/Libertarian-minded journalist. His book, “Road Hogs,” came out June 2011. Peters has been writing a weekly column about cars for almost 20 years now. He is the author of “Automotive Atrocities” and “Road Hogs” (MBI). He lives in rural SW Virginia with his wife and a polyglot crew of animals.
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A Criminal Enterprise Called the Democratic Party ... Alan Caruba

By Alan Caruba

I’ve read about this in history books. It’s what happened to the Weimar Republic in Germany when its currency collapsed and anarchy followed. The result was Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

In the wake of the Great Depression, the wheels began to come off the Weimar Republic, a liberal democracy that had been in place since the end of World War One. In 1930 President Hindenburg assumed emergency powers. By 1933 three Chancellors had preceded Hitler and when the Nazi government took over it simply ignored Germany’s constitution. 

A lot of scholars who know much more about the U.S. Constitution than I are increasingly speaking out about the same scenario occurring here. Radio personality Mark Levin considers President Obama a despot in light of his refusal to negotiate with the Republicans and the resulting shutdown of the government. Suffice to say, his refusal, carried out by Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, worked. 

For the ordinary citizen, Obama’s actions during the shutdown have been instructive if they were paying attention. He threatened not to pay Social Security retirees, Military retirees, disability recipients, and federal retirees. The elderly and the military were the prime targets for his threats and, despite the fact that more than eighty percent of the government was still functioning, he directed that national parks be closed; most dramatically in Washington, D.C. where veterans of World War II and the Vietnam War were denied access to the memorials to their service.

The President and the Democratic Party want all the restrictions on their capacity to spend tax dollars lifted. They want an end to the sequestration that curbs the natural inclination of government departments and agencies to spend taxpayer dollars as fast as the Federal Reserve can print them. The Reserve in turn has been purchasing $85 billion in the nation’s debt every month to maintain the fiction that the nation can pay its bills despite the fact that it has more debt than the entire national economy—the Gross Domestic Product—generates every year. 

And who doubled that debt in just his first term? Obama. 

A new book by Clark M. Neilly III, “Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government” ($23.99, Encounter Books) says bluntly that “We are drowning in a sea of unconstitutional regulations that compel obedience, stifle innovation, and punish morally blameless conduct.”

“Heedless of the constitutional limits on its own power,” says Neilly, “and indulged by a quiescent judiciary, the federal government now spends 24 percent of our gross domestic product, the highest proportion since World War II.”

Neilly is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice where he litigates constitutional cases involving economic liberty, property rights, free speech, and school choice. He is the modern version of the biblical Jeremiah raising his voice to warn of what is to come if Congress and the courts do not begin to obey the limits the Constitution sets forth so clearly that anyone can understand them.

“In 2013, a series of scandals involving the Internal Revenue Service, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, and other federal agencies reminded Americans about the hazards of free-wheeling government”, says Neilly.

“And in light of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ‘Obamacare’, Congress can even tell people how to spend their money by penalizing those who refuse to buy things it thinks they should have, like government approved health insurance. Congress has no legitimate power to do that, which is why the Supreme Court had to pretend the penalty was actually a tax.”

Suffice to say that Neilly is extremely critical of the failure of the judicial system to uphold the Constitution and the current state of government in America today. “As far as the government is concerned, it is your boss, setting policies and issuing edicts that you will obey. Between that awesome power and you stands the Constitution.”

Obamacare is despotism in action. As Neilly says, if the government can order you to buy health insurance you may not need or want and fine you if you refuse, you are no longer living in a republic with a functioning Constitution.

And this is the reason the Tea Party movement began and why a handful of Senators and Representatives, elected with Tea Party support, have been holding out, seeking to defund, delay or repeal Obamacare. If Obamacare succeeds, America will fail. It is already playing havoc with the economy. 

The government shutdown was a political battle in a larger political war between the socialist Democratic Party and a badly frayed conservative Republican one. Supported by votes that have been purchased from the public treasury—the largess of welfare and a matrix of other programs that redistribute wealth—and a measure of election fraud, the Democratic Party has become a criminal enterprise. 

As Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address, “We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”


 

He said that in 1981.

© Alan Caruba, 2013
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